Page 814 - david-copperfield

have been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea what
my notes were about. But, as to reading them after I had got
them, I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions
of an immense collection of tea-chests, or the golden char-
acters on all the great red and green bottles in the chemists’
shops!
There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all
over again. It was very hard, but I turned back, though with
a heavy heart, and began laboriously and methodically to
plod over the same tedious ground at a snail’s pace; stop-
ping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on all
sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these
elusive characters by sight wherever I met them. I was al-
ways punctual at the office; at the Doctor’s too: and I really
did work, as the common expression is, like a cart-horse.
One day, when I went to the Commons as usual, I found
Mr. Spenlow in the doorway looking extremely grave, and
talking to himself. As he was in the habit of complaining
of pains in his head - he had naturally a short throat, and I
do seriously believe he over-starched himself - I was at first
alarmed by the idea that he was not quite right in that direc-
tion; but he soon relieved my uneasiness.
Instead of returning my ‘Good morning’ with his usual
affability, he looked at me in a distant, ceremonious man-
ner, and coldly requested me to accompany him to a certain
coffee-house, which, in those days, had a door opening into
the Commons, just within the little archway in St. Paul’s
Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and
with a warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions

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